Principled Talent Highlight: Ahnaf & Mederva Health

Principled would like to highlight a recent talent placement, Ahnaf Siddiqui, who left Meta after seven years to work with Mederva Health. Ahnaf’s story represents what is possible for others in big tech who, like him, seek work that is more values-aligned, while also being stimulating and that enables one’s utilization of technical skills.

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Mohammed Kaleel, CEO of Mederva Health, spoke highly of working with Principled during the hiring process. He noted Principled’s access to top-tier talent, which was only possible through Principled’s work building the network that would reach such talent, including engineers such as Ahnaf. Mohammed explained that traditional recruiting is often a “numbers game,” but that that experience working with Principled was more “curated.” He notes that this curated experience was evident through identifying Ahnaf as a fit, both based on shared values and on technical skills. He explained, “Principled understood what we were building and who could build it with us.”

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Mederva was impressed with Ahnaf’s decision to leave his “comfortable position at Meta” because he was unable to reconcile his values with the company’s direction. For Mederva, Ahnaf’s decision, and the motivation behind it, was rare and humbling. And this decision, coupled with Ahnaf’s combination of talent, skills, and integrity, made Mederva especially excited to move to the next step in bringing him on board. Mederva’s hope was to find a candidate that exhibited both mission-alignment and the level of technical skill needed to problem-solve at a complex level. Resonating deeply with their mission was of great importance to Mederva, wherein they wanted the candidate to not simply complete tasks, but to understand the importance of building tools that could positively impact real people, such as one’s mother, spouse, or child.

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And, in turn, Mederva Health was a good fit for Ahnaf. In seeking more values-aligned work, Ahnaf was seeking work with an organization whose mission he could confidently stand behind. Mederva’s mission to provide accessible healthcare technology in order to reduce barriers to care was exactly the type of mission Ahnaf aligned with and imagined himself contributing to. In thinking about Mederva’s mission, Ahnaf shared that he had always imagined and hoped for a healthcare UX where one could DM a doctor directly instead of waiting weeks for contact. And now, Ahnaf is able to leverage his work to create and support this exact type of accessibility that he both personally sought, and that is recognized as widely beneficial to others. In reflecting on joining Mederva, he advises others in tech to not be afraid to leave; he says, “you can probably work on any given problem more directly and with more funding if you leave big tech,” encouraging others to pursue mission-aligned work, and to do so with the support of organizations like Principled who work to match candidates to companies based on shared values.